


The History of Violence

by ishime



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Brainwashed Russia, Dark, Gen, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 12:31:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishime/pseuds/ishime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's truly ironic, that Russia is the one to embody the USSR. Harsh and bitter irony, when everyone in their home is teaming up to hate him.</p>
<p>Or, USSR!Russia's sick, sick relationship with the rest of his household.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The History of Violence

**Disclaimer :** Hetalia and its characters belong to Himayura.   
**Warning :**  
This fic is from Russia's point of view and therefore is utterly _biaised_. It deals with insanity and violent, abusive behavior. It's not meant as an appology for anything that has happened between real countries, nor for physical abuse in general.   
  


  
  
It's truly ironic, that Russia is the one to embody the USSR. The joke is not lost on him - it makes him smile when he creeps along the hallways of his own mansion, smile wider and wider as he listens to soft echoes of hushered voices, until his lips and cheeks hurt.   
Harsh and bitter irony, when everyone in their home is teaming up to hate him. It makes no sense to him how outsiders always fail to notice the icy looks and the sharp edges in the whispers following him as soon as he turns away - how he ends up being called a cold bastard by everyone, outside and inside his home, even though he's the only one who _tries_ to make a family out of them.   
  
He ignores it. He has to, if he wants to work things out. He pretends not to hear their complaints, not to notice their glowers, the burnt or raw meals, he corrects the deliberate errors in paperwork. He wants his house to be a home, not a battlefield, however cold the war.   
  
He follows them, checks on them and tries to make sure they don't mess up with boss' orders. He fails miserably on the latter, no matter how much energy he spends in supervising, so he takes responsibility and reports to his boss. He confesses his uselessness, takes the punishment from the guards and fights the urge to drag his feets on his way home. He calls whoever committed the fault in the first place in his study and keeps the stick and whip on his desk while he explains, as quietly as he can manage (he fails a lot in that respect too), why he has to punish them.   
He doesn't like to beat or whip them - who likes hurting the people they are responsible for? If they have to be punished, he'd rather do it himself than leave the dirty work to some guards or soldiers. This is what caring and responsability mean, this much at least he has managed to learn. He smiles and smiles and smiles as the whip lashes their bare backs, because smiling is easier and he cannot keep frowning at them very long once they start to cry.   
To make matters worse, they don't seem to learn at all. His attempts at explaining why they were wrong are nothing but another failure. Everyone takes one punishment after the other, there's always another offender, and this vicious circle only fuel their hate for him.   
  
He tries to drown his loneliness in work - hopes to please at least his boss - but he's just as bad a comrade as a big brother. He can't bring himself to be the perfect country comrade Lenin dreamed of; he's not good enough, there's always something wrong, somebody within him betraying the ideals he swore to follow, and boss has to punish him for his failures, again and again, both his body and his people.   
He comes home with his back covered in bruises left by the boots and sticks of the guards, and he wishes it was painful enough to forget the barbed wires tattooed on his neck. It never is. It doesn't matter if he hides them under his scarf, the damn things hurt like Hell with every new barb appearing and getting infected, and he spends hours staring at them in the mirror, whispering the name of every camp and slowly choking on his shame. Because he never learns either, and he keeps failing again and _again_.  
Then he locks himself in his room and drowns everything in alcohol, because vodka is the most (the _only_ ) faithful friend he's ever had.   
  
And sometimes, when he wakes up with a terrible hangover to the sound of muffled giggles coming from the kitchen under his room, he can't take it anymore. He tries to enjoy the splinters of joy he gets, to grin and bear it like he's supposed to, and he just _snaps_. He pulls his coat on and stomps down the stairs and through the hallways, barges into the kitchen and starts throwing things at whoever's in here, blunt, harsh words and empty vodka bottles and his pipe slides out of his sleeve and into his palm and he grips it and it starts swinging on its own, and he's just too _tired_ and envious and angry to try and stop it.   
  
Later, when he's back in his cold, empty room and has to clean the food (and sometimes worse, but he'd rather not think about that) on it, he tries to convince himself that he should go back down to appologize, admit that he was wrong and acted out of frustration and desperation and try to mend his ways. As he lays down on his bed, he can hear people sob in the kitchen, and others whisper frantically, aggressively. He tells himself he should feel guilty for hurting his dear family.  
  
Somehow, it just ends up as another failure. 

**Author's Note:**

> Russia's tattoo => is a reference to criminals' tattoos, particularly the ones they got in prison. Among Russian mafia, tattoos are used as a sort of code to tell what sort of man a prisonner is. They can be flattering (and voluntary) or humiliating (and forced), depending on what they mean. According to what I found on the internet, barbed wires are one of the patterns used to show that a man has spent time in prison; the number of barbs corresponds to the number of years they spent there.  
> Russia hides his because it's a mark the gulag is leaving on him, not something he choosed. The barbs adding up are symbolizing all the people sent there. The camps usually were overcrowded and unsanitary, hence the high mortality rate and Russia's tattoo getting infected.


End file.
